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Little critters, big energy

ORNL team receives $2 million to study use of microbial electrolysis in biorefineries

Abhijeet Borole assembles a microbial electrolysis cell to assess the hydrogen production from the bio-oil aqueous phase.
(hi-res image)

Tennessee scientists are using one of Earth’s smallest creatures to solve some of the government’s biggest bioenergy problems.

For the next three years, a $2.1 million grant is allowing researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to use a process called microbial electrolysis to transform plant biomass into hydrogen to produce energy-rich biofuel for use in combustion engines.

With conventional technology, industries convert biomass into bio-oil—which is a corrosive substance that turns into biofuel after it’s treated with natural gas. This treatment provides hydrogen atoms that can deoxygenate bio-oils, but the process also emits a significant amount of carbon dioxide.

The Department of Energy has given ORNL the three-year grant to address this environmental issue and to boost the hydrogen and carbon efficiency of biofuel production.

“We think we can solve the problem by using live microbes instead of natural gas and chemical catalysts to create biofuels,” said project leader Abhijeet Borole of ORNL’s Biosciences Division. “We know that microbes can convert organic compounds into hydrogen gas, but the process doesn’t yet run at a high enough rate or efficiency to work in a huge reactor where thousands of gallons of the bio-oil aqueous phase needed to be treated every day.”

The process requires a small energy input, but the majority of energy will be produced by electrogenic microbes—a type of bacteria that generates electricity while dining on organic compounds. These microbes eat the bio-oil’s organic acids and produce an electrical current capable of converting the corrosive compounds in bio-oil and water into hydrogen.

“These microbes can reduce the energy normally needed to hydrolyze water by up to 70 percent while consuming the corrosive organic compounds,” Borole said.

It’s a healthy exchange. Scientists provide the microbes with food, and the microbes, in turn, produce hydrogen to make biofuels that can be used for transportation.

For this process to work efficiently, ORNL’s team must build a microbial community that can digest the organic compounds found in the aqueous phase of bio-oils and create a system that can harness the electrical currents produced.

ORNL’s team is collaborating with researchers at Georgia Tech and the University of Tennessee to solve these problems and improve other aspects of the biofuel production process. Together, they are also working to develop membrane separators that can recycle water in biorefineries, improve the process that separates water and oil emulsions, optimize microbial electrolysis and identify the organic compounds in bio-oils available for microbial breakdown.

The team has scientists from a wide range of disciplines that address different aspects of the problem. The project involves scientists with expertise in chemistry, biology, microbiology, environmental science and engineering.

“We are working together to develop the microbial electrolysis process and other supporting processes so that eventually microbes can help mass produce hydrogen to produce biofuel,” Borole said. “There is a difference between scientific and technological progress. We want to see if we can bridge that gap.”

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 calls for the production of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022.

Other partners on the project are Pall Corporation, OmniTech International and FuelCellEtc.

The project is funded by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, BioEnergy Technologies Office.